From a press release of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today released the Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities for the First Half (January-June) of 2021, which shows the largest six-month increase ever recorded in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System’s history. An estimated 20,160 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the first half of 2021, up 18.4% over 2020. That’s the largest number of projected fatalities in that time period since 2006.
Vehicles should have gotten safer over the last 15 years, especially as dangerous old cars like 1980s light pickup trucks get scrapped.
… In addition to the traffic fatality data, NHTSA also released behavioral research findings from March 2020 through June 2021, indicating that incidents of speeding and traveling without a seatbelt remain higher than during pre-pandemic times.
The blue bar is the first percentile (slowest) and the orange bar is the 99th percentile (fastest) on urban interstates. Both ends of the spectrum shot up in April–May 2020 when there was little traffic. (Traffic deaths overall were up last year despite a big drop in miles driven.)
But in the first half of 2021, as traffic has returned, the fastest drivers are driving even faster than during the lockdown.
… Preliminary data from the Federal Highway Administration show that vehicle miles traveled in the first half of 2021 increased by about 173.1 billion miles, or about 13%. The fatality rate for the first half of 2021 increased to 1.34 fatalities per 100 million VMT, up from the projected rate of 1.28 fatalities per 100 million VMT in the first half of 2020.
So, about 5% more deaths per mile driven in the first half of 2021 than during the first half of 2020. That’s pretty bad. Being 5% worse than 2020 is especially bad because 2020 was so awful. The fatality rate per mile driven in the first half of 2021 is 25% higher than in the first half of 2019.
There is no data yet on deaths by race. Last year, black traffic fatalities (overall, not per mile) were 36% higher during the Racial Reckoning (June–December) than during the same period in 2019.
One reason appears to be that Americans are pretty sozzled lately:
Last year (blue line), alcohol sales exploded in July 2020 and stayed high until December when they suddenly crashed due to Christmas being canceled. This year (red-orange line) they’ve been huge all year, running about 15–20% higher than in 2019 (green line).
During the same period, marijuana has been increasingly legalized or decriminalized. Weren’t we told legalizing marijuana would lead to less drunk driving?
In general, Americans have been slacking off and behaving less responsibly since the pandemic being declared, with the racial reckoning adding to the laziness, self-indulgence, recklessness, and insobriety.
